Self-Help

I’ll admit: I wasn’t prepared for how *funny* *Self-Help* would be. Moore’s humor is the kind that makes you snort-laugh on the subway, then immediately glance around to see if anyone noticed. Take ‘How to Become a Writer’—a story that starts as a satirical how-to guide and morphs into a heartbreaking meditation on ambition and failure. Oppenheimer’s narration is pitch-perfect here, her deadpan delivery selling the joke while letting the underlying sadness seep through. She has a knack for Moore’s rhythmic sentences, which often read like stand-up routines with a tragic punchline. That said, the audiobook isn’t without its stumbles. A few stories (‘Go Like This,’ for instance) feel slightly dated in their 80s-era gender dynamics, and Oppenheimer’s voice occasionally flattens the more experimental pieces—like ‘What You Want to Do Fine,’ where the fragmented structure could’ve used more vocal texture. Still, the highs far outweigh the lows. The production is clean, with no distracting edits, and the pacing keeps even the densest stories engaging. If you’ve ever rolled your eyes at a self-help book, this is the antidote: a collection that mocks the genre while delivering something far more honest and human.